To San Martin the only hopeful plan seemed to be to drive the Spaniards out of Chile, and then attack Peru, the stronghold of Spanish power in South America. He aimed not only for the independence of Argentina, but of all of that great continent; he vowed he would not be satisfied until the last Spanish soldier had left the soil of South America, and every province was free. To this end he sought the appointment as governor of Cuyo, nestling up against the Andes on the direct route to Chile, and now known as the province of Mendoza, in Argentina. The inhabitants of that section, who breathed the free air of the mountains, were notoriously anti-Spanish, brave and enduring. Chilean patriots who had been exiled were numerous here, too, and it offered good recruiting ground. He brought with him as a nucleus a part of the troops he had drilled in Buenos Aires, and the government later sent him a corps of negro slaves, who had been freed from bondage. For three years San Martin laboured steadily building up a great war machine. Though civil war waged in and around the capital he kept aloof from all these disturbances, and busied himself in recruiting, drilling and instructing officers, as well as men, raising taxes, gathering provisions, making powder, casting guns, building portable bridges and making all arrangements for transport and commissariat on his contemplated march into Chile. Dictator succeeded dictator, military chief followed military chief in Buenos Aires. A formal act of independence from Spain had been drawn up and proclaimed on the 9th of July, 1816, in Tucuman, where Congress had convened for that purpose. Pueyrredon was selected as supreme director. He was succeeded by Rordeau, and he again was defeated by Artigas. Then came Ramirez and other military leaders who gained more or less power and authority. San Martin paid no attention to these military or governmental affairs. One idea, one definite plan absorbed all his energy and attention. This plan he confided to no one. This taciturn general, however, was preparing a thunderbolt that would clear the Argentine sky of all these clouds, except internal dissensions. When summer came in 1817, which is our winter, and all the passes were freed from snow, he felt that he was ready to advance. Among his forces were the picked youth of Buenos Aires, reckless, enthusiastic and ambitious, who were willing to follow this leader anywhere; manumitted negroes, who were scarcely inferior to their white comrades; Chilean exiles, who preferred death to submission, and looked upon this as their only hope of again seeing their homes. All of these men had been thoroughly drilled in the arts of war as practised by the armies of Europe in the Napoleonic era. No detail had been omitted. The last few months had been spent in preparing rations of dried beef and parched corn, in gathering mules for transport, and in making sledges to be used on the slopes which were too steep for cannon on wheels.